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49 The diverse approaches taken with these four Humphrey dances illustrate the kinds of positions available to the contemporary director when dealing with the past. Ideas borrowed and adapted from other disciplines have provided a way forward in supplementing and extending existing practices. Collingwood’s notion of the “living past” alongside White’s “recognizable form” and Eliot’s premise that “the past alters the present as much as the present directs the past” are central to an interpretive stance. The implication is that nothing is fixed or immovable, but at the same time there is a foundation to take into account and use as an underpinning. The implied emphasis on “historical imagination” provides a framework from which the contemporary interpreter can then operate. The living past concept implies continuing evolution. Collingwood provides a useful illustration through the Hegelian spiral cited earlier: “history travelling in spirals, with apparent repetitions differentiated by having acquired something new.”1 The spiral and its acquisitions become clear through applying this idea to a single instance of a work’s performance history: the center of the spiral is Humphrey’s original production; dancers in the original production perform it many times with numerous cast changes; these direct descendant dancers stage the work for a subsequent generation of dancers who have had no exposure to the source, the choreographer, but who do possess an immersion in the style and philosophy; dancers from this generation pass it on again, in a time when dance technique and training have changed out of all recognition in the eighty-plus years since the spiral began. If nothing else about the dance is consciously altered, the passing of time creates an evolution. This same notion can be applied to a director’s process, with past experiences of a work having an inevitable impact on any subsequent interpretation. Both examples indicate the capacity for change within the seemingly fixed entity of the work itself. Exploring the Creative Impulse 50 Exploring the Creative Impulse Adopting the Collingwood stance on evidence provides the freedom to look at a body of evidence from the present and, further, to consider it without restriction . Privileging evidence is an important aspect of Collingwood’s “actual/ potential” viewing model. In choosing which parts of the evidence to accept, new frameworks of enquiry can be created from which to explore a dance. I chose to privilege evidence directly attributable to Humphrey as the starting point for each interpretation because the connection back to the source is central to my motivation. That connection is not limiting, in terms of imposing fixed parameters; rather, it creates a credible reference point from which to begin. Engaging with the evidence from a fluid standpoint allows for “possibility ” rather than fixed “certainty.” The presence of possibility in turn creates the potential for new interpretation, and herein lies the attraction of an idea such as the historical imagination. If one approaches a work with discovery at the forefront of the process, there is a strong likelihood that one will uncover something new and fresh. The “new discovery” may indeed transmit as far as the audience, the most extreme of my examples being The Shakers/The Chosen, but not necessarily, because the discovery aspect can relate as well to the directorial process, as illustrated through Water Study. The selection of evidence can make sense of themes, ideas, and situations from the present, no matter what period setting a work might have. White’s notion of the “recognizable, familiar form” is helpful because it can be applied as a yardstick of understanding throughout an interpretive process. The crafting of selected evidence and ideas creates the first instance of a recognizable form—for the director at least. From there, the “form” is explored, fleshed out, expanded upon, further defined until it is made sense of by the performers through the rehearsal process. The final instance is the production itself in its moment of performance for an audience. A related idea is that of “reshaping” a work, a device applied to two of the four Humphrey works but from different standpoints in each case. The reshaping of With My Red Fires was driven by a sociocultural imperative alongside narrative exploration, whereas the reshaping of The Shakers came about through creative exploration of the choreographic structure and vocabulary. These examples illustrate that divergent approaches are possible for dance works. One can make the same claim in relation to an individual work, with each new interpretation offering the possibility for a different...

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